2013-2014
News Release
REF NO.: 94
SUBJECT: South African performance art in relation to HIV/AIDS in Africa topic of public lecture at Memorial University
DATE: February 28, 2014
A renowned ethnomusicologist will present a public talk on South African performance arts in relation to HIV/AIDS in Africa on Tuesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. on the second floor of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.
Dr. Louise Meintjes of Duke University will speak about how a rural community celebrates the male body through Zulu ngoma song and dance even in the difficult context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“In this case study, I reflect on Africanist analyses of the performance arts in relation to HIV/AIDS and on the value of song and dance in times when people encounter the unspeakable,” said Dr. Meintjes.
When confronted with diminishing capacities that represent a compromised social life -- whether of individual relationships or of a men's ngoma song and dance team -- how do men perform their responsibilities to other men? How do singer-dancers manage the necessity of caring for their fellow teammates in the presence of HIV stigma that pushes their relationships to the limit?
Dr. Meintjes is an associate professor of music and cultural anthropology at Duke University and author of Sound of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio, a groundbreaking urban ethnography of a recording studio in Johannesburg in the early 1990s. She has recently co-written three review articles on sound, the senses, and ethnomusicology (with Ana Maria Ochoa, Tom Porcello and David Samuels), and is currently working on an ethnography of the aesthetics and politics of migrant Zulu men's song and dance in the post-apartheid era.
Dr. Meintjes garnered much attention in the 1990s for her article, Paul Simon’s Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning, and received the prestigious 2005 Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for her article Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the Mountain: The Production of Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and Dance in Post-apartheid South Africa.
The lecture will take place at Memorial University’s Resource Centre for Music, Media and Place (MMaP) gallery on the second floor of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.
The MMaP lecture series is sponsored by the Office of the President, Memorial University, in collaboration with the School of Music.
REF NO.: 94
SUBJECT: South African performance art in relation to HIV/AIDS in Africa topic of public lecture at Memorial University
DATE: February 28, 2014
A renowned ethnomusicologist will present a public talk on South African performance arts in relation to HIV/AIDS in Africa on Tuesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. on the second floor of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.
Dr. Louise Meintjes of Duke University will speak about how a rural community celebrates the male body through Zulu ngoma song and dance even in the difficult context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“In this case study, I reflect on Africanist analyses of the performance arts in relation to HIV/AIDS and on the value of song and dance in times when people encounter the unspeakable,” said Dr. Meintjes.
When confronted with diminishing capacities that represent a compromised social life -- whether of individual relationships or of a men's ngoma song and dance team -- how do men perform their responsibilities to other men? How do singer-dancers manage the necessity of caring for their fellow teammates in the presence of HIV stigma that pushes their relationships to the limit?
Dr. Meintjes is an associate professor of music and cultural anthropology at Duke University and author of Sound of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio, a groundbreaking urban ethnography of a recording studio in Johannesburg in the early 1990s. She has recently co-written three review articles on sound, the senses, and ethnomusicology (with Ana Maria Ochoa, Tom Porcello and David Samuels), and is currently working on an ethnography of the aesthetics and politics of migrant Zulu men's song and dance in the post-apartheid era.
Dr. Meintjes garnered much attention in the 1990s for her article, Paul Simon’s Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning, and received the prestigious 2005 Jaap Kunst Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology for her article Shoot the Sergeant, Shatter the Mountain: The Production of Masculinity in Zulu Ngoma Song and Dance in Post-apartheid South Africa.
The lecture will take place at Memorial University’s Resource Centre for Music, Media and Place (MMaP) gallery on the second floor of the St. John’s Arts and Culture Centre.
The MMaP lecture series is sponsored by the Office of the President, Memorial University, in collaboration with the School of Music.
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